Literature: The World’s (Ancient Greek) Wives - Poems of Carol Ann Duffy

Women play an extraordinary dual role in ancient Greek myth and literature. While real women were secluded, debarred from public life, and without power, mythical women are at the centre of even the most masculine epic story (think, for instance, of Helen and the Trojan War). In her collection, The World’s Wife, former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has taken an assortment of women from Greek myth and given them their own poetic accounts, in some cases revising the original, in others imagining ones that we do not have.

This course will take a closer look at a number of poems featuring women from ancient Greece in Carol Ann Duffy’s collection, The World’s Wife. Through friendly and accessible discussion of the poems, as well as ancient texts providing background on the women depicted, we will learn more about women in Greek myth and their uses in modern culture.

Links to further reading on background will also be provided via Canvas for those who wish to extend their learning.